I’m grateful to curator Matthew Lawson Garrett and the team at Datsuijo independent art space for mounting this solo exhibition of my work in Tokyo, transforming my first artist book into a physical installation (and with translation into Japanese)! The book, “She Never Rode That Trishaw Again” (https://chiyinsim.com/she-never-rode-that-trishaw-again/), is the first of possibly four I’m…
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My series of glass works The Suitcase Is A Little Bit Rotten and two-channel film The Mountain That Hid are in a group exhibition “Double Exposure” at Camera Austria in Graz. Curatorial text by Anna Voswinckel: The examination of the complex, transnational political entanglements of colonialism and its traumatic effects on (family) biographies forms the starting…
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I first became interested in Magic Lantern slides in learning through @gabbymoser’s scholarship about how they were a colonial pedagogical tool — specifically, they were used in a series of eight lectures cast as geography lessons to teach pupils around the British empire about its colonies. I became interested in what was inscribed in those…
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“The Suitcase Is A Little Bit Rotten”, drawn from a series of 40 glass slides , and “The Mountain That Hid”, a two-channel video work, are on view at Zilberman Gallery, Berlin, in the group show “Transit”. Zilberman | Berlin is delighted to announce the opening of its new space in Berlin’s Schlüterstraße 45 with…
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An installation of photographic prints and a newly-created VR piece, ‘The Garden Of No Return”, from my “Shifting Sands” project is on view at the Gropius Bau Berlin till August 2023. Indigo Waves and Other Stories Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora 6 April to 13 August 2023 Taking the stories and histories…
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“This meticulously crafted and quietly powerful work probes the ways in which the past reads differently depending on how and by whom history is written.” Full text: https://hyperallergic.com/772131/photographing-historys-silences-and-gaps/
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“…Sim Chi Yin’s multimedia project One Day We’ll Understand (2016–ongoing) — despite its stern, museological feel, a remarkably stirring exploration of the anti-colonial guerrilla war waged in British Malaya in the mid-20th century …” https://www.frieze.com/article/17th-istanbul-biennial
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Installation views of my new solo exhibition in Berlin on my long, on-going project re-narrating the anti-colonial war in British Malaya — a story that is as small and as large as one can make it, for all the resonances across the decolonisation wars in the “Third World” at the time. A period of history…
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She Never Rode That Trishaw Again tells the story of Loo Ngan Yue, a woman widowed by the British war against anti-colonial forces in Malaya — a 12-year conflict that became a template for other counter-insurgency campaigns around the world, including Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Artist and author Sim Chi Yin juxtaposes vacation photographs of Loo…
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A solo exhibition of my new work “Interventions”, part of my broader “One Day We’ll Understand” project, opened 4 July 2021 at the Les Rencontres d’Arles. Curated by Sam I-shan. The exhibition is installed in the Abbaye de Montmajour, a Benedictine monastery from the 10th century. https://www.rencontres-arles.com/en/expositions/view/1032/sim-chi-yin A review essay on the show, by British…
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I’ve been working on “Interventions”, a new solo show to debut at Les Rencontres de la photographie, Arles in July. This is a new chapter of my ongoing work on the anti-colonial war in Malaya, focused on my reinterpretations of the colonial representation of this war and its participants. Excited to debut it at Arles,…
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Won the Jimei x Arles Discovery Prize in November 2020. Deeply appreciate this surprise win, which means I’ll do a solo show at Les Rencontres d’Arles in France next summer.
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Excited to be among 7 artists shortlisted for the Tim Hetherington Trust Visionary Award 2020 — a special grant in the spirit of Tim’s ever seeking different and unique ways of telling stories of our world. Tim was always genre-defying, irreverently multi-disciplinary and experimental. Congratulations to fellow shortlisted artists! Visionary Award shortlisted artists 2020 Daniel…
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Excited to join the stable of artists at Zilberman Gallery making work on socio-political themes from around the world, with this new representation by the gallery announced via e-flux today. With thanks to the team at the gallery; look forward to making new, multidisciplinary work with your support! https://www.art-agenda.com/announcements/319098/sim-chi-yin
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Part of my series on nuclear weapons, “Most People Were Silent is showing in Art Basel’s Virtual Viewiing Room, alongside work by fellow Zilberman Gallery artists including Isaac Chong Wai, Pedro Gómez-Egaña, Jaffa Lam, Burcak Bingol. This is the Covid19-era alternative after Art Basel Hong Kong was called off this month. https://www.artbasel.com/viewing-rooms ・・・ Visit our @artbasel Online Viewing Room dedicated…
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“One Day We’ll Understand” 2015 – on-going Remnants Photographic installation, variable dimensions Requiem Two-channel video and sound installation, 16:9, sound, colour Duration: 12:34 mins Sim Chi Yin’s Remnants and Requiem take us on a cinematic journey through traces of hidden histories. The ethereal landscapes she conjures are an unspoken archive of an undeclared war. Evocative…
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Alessandra Cianetti and Xavier de Sousa of Performingborders I LIVE organized this opportunity for Chi Yin to do her performative reading and be in thoughtful conversation with curator Annie Jael Kwan about hidden (family and national) histories, counter narratives, embodied trauma and performative acts, intended and unintended, at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts in Brighton on March…
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“They emerge out of nowhere. Culturally, aesthetically, geologically, ecologically, architecturally. They possess no foundation and little fundament. Some of them stand unfinished, defeated by the whim of a politician or the tremor of global financial markets. For artificial islands don’t stand for anything but the perspective of quick economic profits and the mirage of luxury…
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A piece of my on-going history project “One Day We’ll Understand” is in a group show in Amsterdam 15 September to 18 November, at Framer Framed gallery. “Unauthorised Medium”, curated by Annie Kwan. https://www.magnumphotos.com/events/event/sim-chi-yin-unauthorised-medium/ https://framerframed.nl/en/exposities/expositie-unauthorised-medium/ I’m showing an experimental installation of portraits, still life images and text from my “One Day We’ll Understand” project. Installation view by…
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Spoke to Magnum.com on where I am with my work and practice. Part of Magnum’s series of interviews introducing the new nominee members this year. https://www.magnumphotos.com/theory-and-practice/magnum-nominee-sim-chi-yin-waited-years-to-be-able-to-commit-to-photography/
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On joining Magnum Photos as its first Southeast Asian photographer, on the Nobel Peace Prize exhibition commission, on the aesthetics of horror, on starting a research PhD at War Studies/ King’s College London, and on shuffling towards the big 4-0! Thanks The Straits Times and Toh Wen Li and the Lianhe Zaobao and Chow Yian Peng, and the two photographers for these interviews and profiles.…
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“Most People Were Silent”, my solo exhibition on nuclear weapons, originally a commission for the Nobel Peace Prize / Nobels Fredssenter | Nobel Peace Center, will open at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore on 20 July, in a installation of video and still images suspended from screens. It’s been a pleasure working this new installation of this work with…
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Excited to begin a new chapter of creating, making, learning, thinking, experimenting, collaborating with Magnum Photos, as my work evolves and diversifies, and combines with explorations in art and academic research. I’ve joined the agency as a nominee: https://www.magnumphotos.com/…/updates-2018-magnum-photos-…/ A special thank you to Jonas Bendiksen and Susan Meiselas for shepherding me through this process, and several friends for helping me…
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Thank you to the British Journal of Photography for a 12-page feature on my evolving work, practice and thinking, in its July 2018 issue catching up with three photographers previously on its “Ones To Watch” list. http://www.bjp-online.com/2018/06/sim-chi-yin/ | “When we first featured Sim Chi Yin in Ones To Watch in 2014, she seemed to have…
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The New Yorker made a video piece on my Nobel Peace Prize exhibition commission “Fallout”. Video and interview by Gareth Smit.
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I presented my project on my family history and the Cold War in British Malaya at the Magnum Foundation “Counter Histories” symposium at the New School in New York, 1 May 2018. A great day of learning and sharing with other practitioners working on counter narratives. Photo by Emma Raynes
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Arianna Rinaldo is putting me in the cellar but I’m excited about it! My “Fallout” project on nuclear weapons, an exhibition commission I produced for the Nobel Peace Prize 2017 / Nobels Fredssenter | Nobel Peace Center will be exhibited at Cortona On The Move festival in Italy in July. The diptychs, single images and video…
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Excited to be able to present “Fallout” my Nobel Peace Prize exhibition commission in New York with Fred Ritchin, a leading thinker of our time on images, communication and photography, and Dean Emeritus at the ICP – International Center of Photography, and Alex Wellerstein, historian of the nuclear bomb. At the Magnum Foundation, April 24, 6pm. Friends in New York,…
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A piece I photographed and researched last year in Vietnam, on the rampant sand mining on the Mekong River and the impact it has on landscapes and communities has just been published on National Geographic. Chunks of the Mekong Delta are melting away into the river daily, taking with it people’s ancestral lands and homes,…
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I’ll be exhibiting part of the family history/ colonial history project I’ve been working on — “One Day We’ll Understand” — at the Esplanade Singapore’s Jendela Gallery during Singapore Art Week, in a three-artist show titled “Relics”, engaging with colonial legacies and hidden histories. Curated by Sam I-shan. The other artists are Sarker Protick from Bangladesh and…
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